North Arkansas Regional Medical Center (NARMC) is leading the state as the first hospital to launch SHARE (State Health Alliance for Records Exchange), a statewide system that gives secure, real-time access to electronic patient health information to various health care providers throughout Arkansas. Through its implementation and use, SHARE will reduce medical errors and duplicate testing, promote improved management of chronic diseases and allow patients to access their own health information.

With SHARE in place, NARMC is ushering in a new era of health care for Arkansans. It allows the exchange of patients’ up-to-date health records electronically to be shared by other hospitals and practices where these patients are being treated.

Many more Arkansas health care organizations will be connecting to SHARE in 2013, with UAMS slated to begin transferring clinical data into SHARE by February. Under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, all health care providers in the nation are required to adopt an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system by 2014 and connect their EMRs to a statewide Health Information Exchange (HIE). SHARE is Arkansas’s HIE.